


Persistence of Vision

by rei_c



Series: Fundamental Image 'verse [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-10
Updated: 2006-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>S1 spoilers, all the way through. Run-on sentences. Twisting of the Kübler-Ross model. Any and all errors relative to established SPN-canon spoken of herein are mine and mine alone.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Catalyst

**Author's Note:**

> S1 spoilers, all the way through. Run-on sentences. Twisting of the Kübler-Ross model. Any and all errors relative to established SPN-canon spoken of herein are mine and mine alone.

Sam dreams of fire. 

For as long as he can remember, back into the far reaches and depths of his memories, long before Jess and every night since, he has dreamed of flames, hot and starving, desperate and needy, and so when he wakes up in a cold sweat one morning, in a cheap motel somewhere between Texarkana and Hope, Arkansas, he doesn’t know why his heart’s racing a million miles a minute, why this latest dream was so different. It’s only as he’s nearly fallen back to sleep that he remembers the voices, and as his eyes close again, they come back, loud, dissonant, clamouring for something he doesn’t quite understand. The realisation, the noise, combined, make him sit up, panting for breath. 

He eventually just gets out of bed, hearing things, voices, _people_ every time he gets near to sleep, and sits at the rickety table, opening the laptop and staring out of the window until Dean rolls over and gives him a bleary-eyed, “Whattimesit.”

\--

They drive in the direction of Carthage and a poltergeist. Sam’s dreading this, dreads the mere mention of poltergeists after what happened in Lawrence, still fresh in his mind and heart, like everything that’s happened in the year since hasn’t taken its own toll on him. He tries to stay awake, but can’t help drifting every so often, startled out of his doze every time by a din of voices that’s loud enough to drown out the Metallica. The first couple times, Dean doesn’t say anything, but the third time, when it leaves Sam white and shaking, Dean says, carefully, “Is it a vision or a nightmare?” and then, “When’s the last time you slept more than four hours?” Sam struggles to get defensive, but he’s _hearing_ things now, and that just isn’t normal, so he replies, “I slept a couple hours last night. And it’s not a vision. I don’t think. I mean, hell, I don’t know,” and he gives this little laugh and rubs his eyes. He kept the visions to himself for months, carried the guilt from that even longer, but they all almost died and things have changed and he might be going crazy, and if there’s one thing Sam’s learned, it’s that he might as well just tell Dean now, it’ll be better in the long run. 

Dean doesn’t say anything for a while, lets four songs click through and the fifth one start on the cassette before asking, “You still wanna go after the poltergeist? I can do it myself, drop you off at a doctor’s or hospital or something.” Sam shakes his head, looks out of the window as he says, “Because that would be a great conversation. ‘Hi, doc, m’name’s Sam. I have visions and now I’m hearing things—think they’re connected or am I just finally losing it?’” Dean frowns but says, “Yeah, good point. Hearing things?” Sam’s head falls back as he gestures, says, “Voices. I guess. I dunno, they’re too loud to make any sense of.” The song finishes and the car is silent for as long as it takes the cassette to turn over, start playing the ‘B’ side and “The Shortest Straw.” “Sam,” Dean begins, and Sam shakes his head. He knows that tone, heard it in Jess’ voice and every day in Dean’s, knows what it means. “It’s both of us or neither, Dean. I’m not letting you do this alone.” Dean says his name again, but Sam just looks at his brother until Dean nods twice, reluctantly.

\--

The poltergeist seems to be a pissy one, not dangerous but annoying. It won’t let them walk through the front door, makes them climb through one of the large windows at the back of the house, and Sam thinks of Max’s uncle when he’s halfway through and praying that the window will stay up. It does and when they’re inside, mirrors shatter on the wall, clocks stop, lights flicker on and off. “Maybe it’s a baby poltergeist?” Dean half-asks, turning to Sam. “’Cause, honestly, I think this is the extent of our troubles.” A candlestick breaks in half and rolls off of a table in the hallway, a long and thin red taper, and it comes to a stop at Dean’s feet. Dean leans down to pick it up, but Sam’s seeing things now so he says, “Stop,” high and urgent and Dean pauses, hand outstretched and half bent over. “Yeah?” he asks, and Sam blinks furiously as if that will make the orbs he’s seeing go away, as if there’s something wrong with his vision instead of what he’s picking up, but then his skin breaks out in goosebumps and shivers. “Let’s do it and leave,” he says, “please?” and Dean stands up. “What is it?” he asks, and Sam shakes his head, winces. “I don’t know, but it isn’t nice or happy. Where’s the chalk?”

Dean pulls three pieces of white chalk from his pocket and gives Sam a worried look before they go down to the basement and find the centre of the house. Dean traces an elaborate symbol while the floorboards above them shriek as if twenty kids are running across them at full tilt, and Sam pours salt in the middle of the design as he murmurs the incantation to dispel the poltergeist. He stops halfway through, swallows tightly and licks dry lips, and the moment stretches enough for Dean’s brow to crease and furrow. Sam’s head is throbbing, pounding the way it does when he’s about to have a vision and he can’t move his eyes from the design because the poltergeist is orbing all over the damn place and if he looks at that straight on, he’s going to go blind from the white-hot light, and why can’t Dean see it, why isn’t Dean casting a circle or pentagram around them, it _hurts_.

Sam drops to his knees, the pressure building and forcing him down, but the painfully cool concrete brings some measure of relief, enough to finish the ritual, and it’s a good thing he’s already close to the ground because the build-up of sheer power caught in the symbol seconds before the poltergeist is banished knocks him unconscious. 

\--

_fire everywhere, nothing but flames and heat and hunger, and it’s burning but not burning_ him _and it doesn’t make sense, doesn’t feel real, which is a lie because this is the most real he’s felt since he almost had that stupid gun, since he started having the visions, since_ Jess _and is this another nightmare, oh, God, is he going to wake up next to her and have this all be a dream, he doesn’t think he could handle it, can’t handle the fire taking someone else from him, can’t handle this heat, please, somebody, make it stop, but it doesn’t, because now he can hear things, too, hear people and they’re telling him things he can’t understand, please, stop, make it stop, let him wake up, please, pleasepleaseplease_

\--

He comes to with a start and a shiver, feeling a wave of nausea move through him, upwards from his stomach. “Don’t you dare fucking throw up in my car,” he hears, and after a moment of panic, places the voice. “Dean. What?” is all he can ask, fighting the bile rising in his throat. Sam loses a few seconds of time, because the next thing he knows, the Impala’s stopped moving, Dean’s opening his door and dragging him onto the grass, and he’s retching, one hand pulling at Dean, the other scrabbling for a hold in the dirt. 

“Better?” Dean asks when Sam’s gone a full minute without heaving, and Sam’s focused too intently on his esophagus to try and decipher his brother’s tone. “Yeah,” he finally rasps, feeling his throat burn, and he coughs again but doesn’t gag. Dean leaves for a moment and Sam tries to move but can’t, so he stares at the trees along the ditch until Dean returns with toothbrush, toothpaste, and a bottle of water. 

It helps, makes him feel semi-human again, and it’s not until they get back in the car and start driving that Sam thinks to ask, “What happened and where are we going?” Dean looks over, hands tight on the steering wheel, then back at the four-lane state highway they’re on, and says, “You knocked yourself out once the poltergeist left, fell and hit your head on the concrete. It left, too, I checked,” he adds, before Sam can ask. “I don’t know why you stopped the incantation and I don’t know why you passed out like that, but I’m taking you to Missouri. Even if she can’t do anything, we’re still going,” and Sam doesn’t argue, knows how freaked out by all of this Dean must be if his brother didn’t even make one snide jab at how Sam fainted like a girl. 

\--

They hit the Oklahoma/Kansas border and then, at midnight, Liberty, and Dean’s practically falling asleep at the wheel, but since he refuses to let Sam drive, they stop at a homey-looking place and get a room for a few hours. Dean fusses over Sam, makes Sam sit on one of the beds and then salts the door and sills himself, like because Sam passed out hours ago, he’s incapable of performing tasks he could do in his sleep. Sam doesn’t argue, his head pounding out a John Bonham drum solo and hearing things every time he blinks. There’s no chance he’ll be sleeping as well, not with the terror that creeps over him every time his eyelids close, every time he can feel that fire licking at the edges of his bones, every time he hears that crowd of voices. Dean’s out almost instantly, still dressed but missing his shoes and coat, those kicked and shrugged off at the edge of the bed. Sam gets up, moves slowly, his whole body humming, and drapes the coat over a chair, moves the shoes under a table. He lines up his own sneakers next to them, then sits down, facing Dean, and opens the laptop. 

\--

Dean wakes up around six, when Sam’s just finished filling out his twenty-second credit card application, after Sam’s spent hours researching, thinking, playing solitaire Vegas-style. He’s won over five thousand dollars, and when Dean thumps down in the chair next to Sam, fifteen minutes later and coffee in hand, he sees the little black number and nods approvingly. “Maybe we _should_ get you to Vegas,” Dean mumbles, and then asks, “You didn’t sleep last night. Gonna be okay to shower?” Sam shrugs and nods, stands up a little unsteadily, but catches his balance. He’s gone longer than this without sleep before, hunts back in high school, all-nighters and the Game at Stanford, and twenty-six hours awake should not _hurt_ like this, but his skin aches with heat and there’s the reason. 

Sam always takes hot showers, so that the mirrors fog up and steam billows around his head like clouds when he’s done, but this time, muscles stretched too far, too tight over bone, like there’s something inside of him that needs to get out, the mere thought of hot water sets his teeth to grinding. Instead, the water’s frigid, like it just melted off of an iceberg, and it feels good, soothes him, but doesn’t cool him down. He’s sweating the instant the water shuts off, dresses in a hurry and opens the bathroom door to see Dean clicking away the laptop. Sam doesn’t say anything but it’s like Dean hears him, because his brother jumps and turns and asks how he’s doing. Sam shrugs, sits on the edge of the not-slept-in bed, and wishes he could concentrate enough to speak, but the damn fire’s trying to eat him and all of these voices won’t shut up, and he can feel unconsciousness clawing its way toward him. He blinks, sees flames, opens his eyes and Dean is there, right there, asking what’s going on. _I don’t know, but make it stop_ , Sam tries to say, but can’t, and then his eyes close, slow motion and he can’t stop them. 

\--

_hurts so much, the fire’s not burning him up but it’s flaring through him, trying to burrow out of his skin from every pore, like he’s trying to contain the sun inside of his body, the sun and stars and supernovas, but he can’t do it, he isn’t that big, and it hurts, oh,_ God _, it hurts, make it stop, make the fire stop, it’s blinding him and burning and hungry and eating him from the inside out and he can hear the voices through the flames and there are hands and bodies and voices and it’s too bright, too needy, too much, too much, please, he can’t take it anymore, someone make it stop, God, please, please, please_

\--

The slide to consciousness is even faster this time, one instant to the next, and he’s clawing at the door, trying to get out, feeling fire all around him. He doesn’t register Dean pulling the car over, doesn’t know that Dean opens the door and yanks Sam out of the Impala, just knows he’s out and there’s space around him, and the shock wears off and leaves him throwing up again. He hasn’t eaten anything since the last time, all that comes up is liquid and it stings and makes him think of fire again, eating away at his esophagus, stomach, throat. He screams, eyes wide, and vomits, screams and vomits again, and then a hand connects with his cheek and it feels like ice. 

Sam breathes, takes big, gulping breaths of air, and fights the reflex to gag, heave. Fingers rest under his chin, push his head up gently, and Sam looks up at Dean, who says, “Sammy,” very carefully and quietly. “You were hyperventilating. D’you feel better now?” Sam swallows, gags, tries again, and then nods. “Good,” Dean says, then helps Sam back to the car. “We’re half an hour from Lawrence and you better not pass out again ‘cause I don’t think we’ll make it next time and you are _not_ going to barf in my car.” Sam tries to smile, but can’t, and Dean pretends that nothing is wrong as he hits the gas.


	2. Denial

Dean drives straight to Missouri’s and she’s standing outside, hands on hips, when they slow to a stop. Dean gets out and Missouri yells, “You bring that brother of yours in here, Dean Winchester, and be quick about it,” and Sam registers that but doesn’t understand it, just watches her walk back into her house without moving . Dean comes over to Sam’s side, opens the door, and hauls Sam out and into the house like a rag doll, but Sam’s glad because his head is splitting apart and his muscles are coming unglued and it hurts. 

Dean sits Sam down and Missouri makes Sam drink a cup of tea, and something in the tea or the house or the air penetrates the haze of agony Sam feels. He looks at Missouri for the first time since they arrived and she smiles, “There y’are,” all soft and slow and Sam looks at her. “Oh, I know,” she says, “and I know it hurts, but I’ll help you get used to it.” Sam doesn’t know what to think about any of this, doesn’t know if he _can_ think, and she laughs and says, “I know a trick or two, Sam. There’s angelica all over the house and the tea’s got chamomile in it. You’ll be able to sleep while you’re here and we’ll work on it while you’re awake.” He nods, distracted by the sight of Dean hovering behind Missouri, face tight and lips pressed together, and Missouri raises her voice, says, “Dean? Take him upstairs, would you? Sam needs to get some rest.”

Sam watches as Dean moves instantly, detached, as if this isn’t his body that his brother’s manhandling up the stairs, tucking into bed, watching over. He’s numb and that’s better than the ache, and he wonders how Missouri could do that so fast, and then he wonders why she never touched him, not once, not even when she gave him the cup of tea. When he sleeps, he dreams of fire, not this new kind, but the fire he’s used to, there, warm, hungry but controlled. 

\--

Sun’s streaming in through the curtains when he wakes up, and he thinks he hears the low murmur of voices until he shakes his head and they’re gone. The action makes him slightly dizzy, he hasn’t eaten for a while and miracles do happen because he’s actually hungry, thinking about toast and coffee and maybe strawberries. He gets out of bed and wobbles on legs that don’t quite feel like his own as he slips on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, runs a hand through his hand, carefully goes downstairs. Missouri’s not in the kitchen, but there’s a candle on the counter, a red one, like the house in Carthage, and the small flame’s dancing in the air currents. Sam watches it, feels like he’s falling into it, and he’s distantly aware of noise and movement. 

He blinks when the flame goes out, comes to himself and feels light-headed, and Dean’s there with a chair. Sam sits heavily, looks at his brother, question in his eyes, and Dean says. “Sorry, but I had to blow it out, Sammy. You were vibing all over the place.” Sam looks around, sees pictures hanging crooked on the walls, sees dishes inches from where they used to be, sees the table’s moved across the kitchen. “What’s happening to me?” he asks and jumps when Missouri, behind him, replies instead of Dean. “You’re just coming into your power,” she says, matter-of-factly, moving into view. “It needs to be trained, like any muscle, so eat breakfast. You’ll need the energy.” He sits there, still numb but now feeling the faint trace-ends of panic, confusion, anger as well, as Missouri makes eggs and bacon for Dean and toast and melon for him, eats when he’s told, cleans his plate, and carries it to the sink when he’s finished. “Go sit in the living room, Sam,” Missouri tells him, and as he goes, obedient, he hears her say something to Dean about how they should have come here right away, not messed with the poltergeist. 

\--

They spend the whole first day focusing and learning how to breathe. Well, he does, and Missouri tells him what he’s doing wrong, what he’s doing right, what he needs to try doing harder. He thinks it helps, though, either the breathing or just being here, because he’s not hearing things and he feels more at peace, more himself. The fire is still there, though, still thrumming underneath his skin like he could burst into flames at any minute and when he has the thought of doing that and Dean seeing it happen, Missouri calls a stop for the day and a stern warning to “control those thoughts of yours, or else this is going to take too much time.” Sam listens and tries, but he can’t really calm down until he sees Dean outside, puttering under the Impala’s hood. 

He walks outside, sits on the front step and watches Dean tighten something and then look up. Sam smiles, half-invitation, and Dean wipes his hands off on a rag before closing the hood and coming over, sitting down next to his brother. “Y’good?” Dean asks, and when Sam says, “Yeah. Yeah, I think I will be,” he exhales and Sam watches a line of tension dissipate from his brother’s body. They sit there for a few minutes, watching the odd car drive past, waving at people who walk by, and Dean looks over and asks, “We can go inside if you’re cold?” and it takes Sam a minute before he sees that Dean’s wearing a t-shirt, a shirt over that, and a ratty old coat he must’ve found at the back of one of Missouri’s closets. Sam’s only wearing a t-shirt, and not a very thick one at that, but he’s not cold. If anything, he’s a little bit warm, and he starts to panic just as Missouri opens the door and says, “Now, Sam Winchester, what did I tell you about those?” Dean looks at him as Sam laughs, smiles, rubs his temples. “Sorry,” he says, and Missouri says, “Dinner’s ready, you two. Come in, wash up, and eat so Sam can get to bed,” which, of course, is when he realises how tired he is. 

Dinner is good, hearty food: fried chicken, potatoes, lots of fruits and vegetables which Dean doesn’t touch, and Missouri gives Sam a cup of tea he thinks is the same as he had last night when he’s done eating. This time he savours the taste and asks what’s in it, what else beside the chamomile. Missouri gives him a slanty-eyed look and says, sharply, “There’s no need for you to know. We’ll be training your gift, not blocking it,” and Sam’s eyes widen, then narrow, as he looks from Missouri to the tea and then back again. “It dampens the psychic threads?” he whispers, and when Missouri nods, the tea suddenly doesn’t look as good. “What?” Dean asks. “Care to explain it to the mundane here?” 

Missouri sighs, starts cleaning off the table, and explains. “Sam’s gift kicked in too fast. If he’d been here sooner, or it had come on slower, we could have worked into it, but it was too fast and he wasn’t close to someone who could help.” Dean shifts in his seat and Sam wonders why his brother looks vaguely guilty. “It could’ve driven him crazy or worse,” Missouri continues, and Sam thinks of Meg and Max, thinks of them and shudders and then yelps when Missouri thwaps him on the back of the head with a wooden spoon. “The tea helps block his psychic abilities as long as it’s in his system, and I’m already weakening it.” Sam says, “That’s why it’s vague, isn’t it?” and Missouri nods, mutters something about too much power as she’s leaned over the sink that Sam doesn’t want to ask about. “What’s vague?” Dean asks, and Sam looks down at the teacup still in his hands. “The voices,” Dean says flatly, and Sam hears Missouri leave, hears her shut the kitchen door, but doesn’t see her because he doesn’t want to look up and see what sort of look Dean’s wearing. 

Dean, bastard brother that he is, won’t accept Sam’s silence, says, “Sam, look at me,” and it’s that tone of voice that Dean learned from their father, so of course Sam looks up, looks at Dean. His brother is wearing the most earnest expression Sam’s ever seen on Dean’s face, and Sam wants to flinch, but he’s tired and takes a sip of his tea instead. “We’ll get through it,” Dean says, “I hate seeing you go through this, but it’ll be over soon,” and Sam holds Dean’s gaze for a moment before he drowns the rest of the tea. “I know,” Sam says, but he doesn’t sound convinced or relaxed or believable, and Dean opens his mouth to say something, but he closes it, stands up, leaves, and Sam drags himself to bed and falls in, still wearing his clothes, and dreams of fire. 

\--

They settle into a rhythm, the three of them, for the next three weeks. Dean runs errands in the morning and works on the Impala in the afternoons, and Sam goes for a long run in the morning right when he wakes up and then sits in Missouri’s living room all day and learns how to control his power. By the end of the first week, he doesn’t feel like falling asleep face-first in his dinner, so Missouri starts talking about the different planes open to Sam now, the different ways he can use his gift, the things he can do to contact the other psychics. Dean doesn’t sit around for these talks, says he’s too mundane for all of it, and disappears off to God knows where. Missouri asks, at one point, out of the side of her eyes, if Sam’s all right with that and he doesn’t know why she wants to know, so he shrugs and says, “Yeah, I guess so.” 

During the third week, Missouri has a friend come over, a friend who has a rune-covered palm, red whorls that hypnotise Sam the first time he sees them, a friend who calls him lanmò-mennen. Missouri looks surprised, then looks even more surprised that Sam doesn’t, and the friend coaxes Missouri out of the room and introduces herself as Jeannie. “What does that _mean_?” Sam asks, “I’ve been trying to find out for years,” and Jeannie replies, “It is something only the loa-ridden will call you, because what you are, at your core, lanmò-mennen, is something only we can understand.” Sam shakes his head, says, “Yes, but does it mean? Why are you calling me that, like a title?” and she doesn’t answer his question, just smiles and begins the lesson. 

Over dinner, three nights later, Sam’s trembling so much that he can’t hold a fork. Dean glares at Jeannie and Missouri in turn, and hustles his brother up to bed, Sam’s first night without the tea. 

\--

Fire, of course, always fire, but he’s learned how to control it here, learned how to hold it inside of himself, his body, and he’s learned not to flinch as it burns through him, hot and hungry and needy. He dreams of fire, but it comforts him, cleanses him, and it’s the best night of sleep he’s ever had, even if it feels like it could be better, maybe, if he didn’t try to control it so tightly, force it to stay in his bones, but the thought of letting it flood through him, uncontrolled, letting it settle even more into him, let it become a part of him, is enough to wake him up and ruin his concentration. It takes ten solid minutes to regain focus, to build up walls in his mind to keep himself here, present, together, separate from the other psychics and his fire and everything supernatural, ten minutes of panic. Sam’s proud of himself when he calms, but knows Missouri and Jeannie will have felt that, and he groans audibly at the thought of more breathing practice.

Sam puts on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, grabs some socks and heads downstairs to the kitchen, pauses in the doorway as all three sitting around the table look at him, three sets of eyes all pinned on him. “What,” he says, and Dean says, “A job. Friend of Missouri’s in Michigan. You ready to leave?” Sam looks at Missouri, who doesn’t shake her head but is definitely saying ‘no,’ and Jeannie, who shrugs. He thinks of how he woke up, that he doesn’t want to go because he’s safe here, with other psychics who understand, but sees how Dean’s tapping his foot, wonders how much more work Dean can do on the Impala, and says, “Yeah, I’m ready.” Missouri frowns, says, “This morning,” and Sam says, “It’s only going to get better, and I didn’t even set off the wards.” Dean stands up, grins blindingly in Sam’s general direction, says, “I’ll pack,” and leaves with a spring in his step that Sam hasn’t seen since they arrived. He stands there, thinks about that, eventually says, “I should shower.”

They’re standing next to the Impala half an hour later, Dean and Sam, and Missouri and Jeannie are telling them to be careful, to call if they need anything, to not let Sam push the limits of his power or control, and while Missouri’s completely serious, Sam sees a sparkle of laughter in Jeannie’s eyes. “Loa clear your path,” Jeannie says, and Missouri elbows her, says, “Don’t invite trouble on them, now. They can pick up their own just fine. You two just keep an eye on yourselves, and Dean, listen to your brother.” Dean looks taken aback, says, “Always do,” and Missouri sighs, rolls her eyes. “All right. Get going, then,” she says, and so Sam and Dean get in the car and Dean drives off, heading east towards Kansas City.


	3. Anger

Michigan’s a lot prettier than Sam remembers, though he hasn’t been back since Max and he didn’t exactly have the time to enjoy the scenery then. This time, he and Dean stay on the other side of the state, following the curve of Lake Michigan north, staying to back roads and rural routes. It’s mostly quiet, no people, no cops, and the only things that keep them constant company are the sun, the trees, and Dean’s collection of cassettes. The further north they go, the more desolate things become; when they cross into the Upper Peninsula, it’s even worse—lake on one side, forest on the other, until they drive up through the middle and then the lake and trees switch sides. 

Dean tells him that they’re hunting a ghost, one that until now was relatively harmless but has recently started trying to drown people in a small, quiet, out-of-the-way lake. The first set was a group of students who managed to get away because one of them had a pentagram tattooed on her back. The second time was a week later, a couple of fishermen who don’t like to talk about it and blame everything on too much beer, and the third was the first night Jeannie slept at Missouri’s, when a couple went out to the lake for a picnic lunch and only the girl made it home. 

When they go through Munising, Sam gets a sudden headache, a quick flash-fire through his body that leaves him gasping for breath. He tells Dean to keep driving and turns around in his seat, looks out the back at the strip of road they just drove over. “What is it?” Dean asks, one eye on the road, slow and sweeping sideways, the other on Sam, who swallows and thinks about the headache, how it felt. “Dispossessed spirit, I think,” he finally says, turning back around. “Not malevolent, just wandering.” It still echoes in his head, the chalkboard sensation of ghosts and spirits, as if ghosts have nails to make that sound and Sam can feel it instead of hear it. He closes his eyes and breathes, and doesn’t think of why the fire flared, which leaves him thinking about the ghost. 

This is difficult to do, at parts, because he doesn’t want to summon the ghost, but easy as well now that Missouri’s taught him the basics and Jeannie drilled him in some of the finer points, and if he’s hesitant to reach out psychically, it’s only because the last time he tried, he actually did summon the spirit and Dean had to banish it and Sam couldn’t hold a fork to eat. “Don’t try it,” he hears Dean say, as if Dean knows what he’s thinking, but Sam’s already brushed his mind against the ghost, now ten miles behind them. “I need the practice,” he says, and then, “Definitely a spirit. Zacharias Cooper. He was a miner for the Iron Company and died in a rockfall.” Sam pauses, opens his eyes and is sun-blind when he adds, in a whisper, “He wants to leave, but he’s trapped.”

Dean looks over and says, “Sammy, don’t think about it. We can’t go back. We’re supposed to be meeting Missouri’s friend and it’s not like we can find this guys bones or lay down an exorcism in the middle of the road,” and Sam nods before settling back in the sear, cramped legs and all, and closes his eyes again. “We won’t go back,” he says, and then brushes minds with Zacharias’ ghost, trying to convince the long-dead miner to move on. 

The Impala brakes suddenly and Sam can hear Dean swear as he opens his eyes and puts one hand on the dash. In the split-second moment of shock before the reaction, Sam loses the tight control over the communication with Zacharias and he’s thrown out of his body. He feels weightless and formless, burning and hot, and then the ghost finds him and touches him and disappears. Sam slams back into his body as Dean says, “Fucking deer,” and his hand hits the dashboard as his mind is going haywire. Little things inside the car begin to shake, like Sam’s water bottle and Dean’s empty styrofoam coffee-cup, empty cassette holders and the last piece of beef jerky bought on the St. Ignace side of the bridge, the fudge box and change from the bridge toll. “Sam,” Dean says, low and forceful, and Sam’s already shaking his head, “I know, I know,” as he’s frantically trying to build his walls up again, putting the questions about the whole astral, out-of-body experience aside so he can make things stop moving. 

It only takes eight minutes this time and Sam’s pleased, but not, and completely unable to look at Dean, who doesn’t say anything, just starts driving. He wonders, not for the first time, how Dean really feels about this, if his brother’s glad Sam survived the crash, if Dean hated being at Missouri’s, trapped there by Sam for three weeks, if Dean’s resentful or scared or disgusted by the new manifestation of Sam’s power. He wants to ask, wants to know, could always try and see if he can’t pluck the answer from Dean’s mind without wading through messy conversation, but he doesn’t think he could stand the answer if it turned out to be anything too honest, and he’d never invade Dean’s privacy like that. It’s like Stanford, in a way—this is who, what, he is, and this is all he has, no going back. If Dean can’t accept that, can’t accept _him_ , Sam doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and he knows that he won’t ever be able to go through the pain of claiming a new life without his family again. 

\--

When they get to Marquette, Dean pays for a room at one of the local motels with wireless access, using Stan Rayner’s credit card. A room like any other motel room, anywhere across the country, and they shower and change and drive downtown to go find Missouri’s friend. She’s waiting for them at a nice brewpub/restaurant, definitely nicer than the places they’re used to, complete with families and businessmen and co-eds. They both get checked out when they walk in, and Sam rolls his eyes as Dean preens under the attention. He feels a tug, like someone’s guiding him, or trying to, and follows the summons to the back of the dining area, to a young woman sitting alone at a table overlooking the harbour. Dean’s right behind Sam when she asks, “Sam, right? Sorry to be presumptuous like that when you walked in,” and Sam smiles, says, “It’s all right. We wouldn’t have seen you otherwise.”

They sit and drink, order food as well, because there’s only so far that beef jerky and fudge can go, and conversation about Marquette, the Upper Peninsula in general, flows easily. Her name is Vicky, she lives down state, ‘below the bridge,’ as she calls it, and met Missouri a few years back. As the tables around them clear out, Dean asks, “So what’s your thing?” and she smiles, teeth and laughter, replies, “Other psychics call me a sensor. I’m like the human version of an EMF,” and Dean, who’s had a few beers and a good steak, likes Vicky and finds that funny, laughs and says, “What would they call Sam?” 

Vicky stops smiling and looks at Sam, who’s honestly curious to hear the answer, because up until three weeks ago he was precognitive and that was all, and Missouri and Jeannie didn’t say anything about his new classification, apart from calling him lanmò-mennen and never explaining what that meant. He blinks, and as if that breaks the tableau, she laughs, leans over and ruffles his hair, says, “We’d call him a little, lost puppy-dog,” and Dean laughs while Sam wonders just what the fucking hell’s going on. The salt shaker on the table twitches just once before he can bite down his irritation, but Vicky catches it, inhales sharply, and doesn’t touch Sam again. 

“Why did you call Missouri?” Sam asks, and Vicky starts telling them the story about Harlow Lake. One of the girls from the first group is a friend of hers and level-headed, but she swears that there was a woman who walked on the water and tried to drown them, so Vicky got curious and went out to the lake. “There’s a local legend,” she says; “people have been seeing a woman there for a hundred years, at least. I took salt with me and cast a circle, but I couldn’t sense anything, so I waited. After the second time, I went back. It felt like a very faint breeze—I was picking something up but not necessarily the ghost. After the third time, I definitely felt it. Her.”

Dean asks about the legend and Vicky spins a story about a woman who lived on the edge of the lake with her husband. The husband, according to the story, went out fishing on the lake and was gone for weeks at a time, and in his absence, a younger man from the village started courting her. One night, the husband came home and caught the two sleeping side-by-side in front of the fire, and killed the man with his bare hands. His wife, he drowned in the lake.

“It’s like a reverse woman-in-white,” Dean says, and Sam nods, says, “But if she cheated on him, why’s _she_ the one haunting the lake? And why not her boyfriend as well?” It’s not a question they can readily answer, so Vicky leaves them directions to Harlow Lake along with her cell number and tells them to call if they need anything. She’s in classes five hours a day but says she can skip if she has to, and that they should get some rest. When she’s gone, and Dean’s asked for another round, Dean leans closer to Sam and says, “She liked you, Sammy. Kept looking at you all night, and she seems less buckets-of-crazy than Meg.” Sam shakes his head, tries to figure out how to tell Dean that Vicky was watching him the way a mouse eyes the cat blocking it from running away, and says, “Not my type. Feel free, though.” Dean grins and when the place closes, they hit up another bar before going back to the motel.


	4. Bargaining

Sam wakes up first, like normal, and manages to leave for a run without, he thinks, waking up his brother. Marquette’s hilly, it reminds him a little of ‘Frisco in that but not much else. The town is small, close-knit, and quaint; it seems like everyone knows everyone else, everyone’s friendly, and from the students he sees shopping along Third Street, there is no big separation between the college kids and the townies, like this is a true college town, one of those places that wouldn’t exist without the university. 

He stops at a bagel place and gets breakfast, not trusting whatever their motel’s peddling as the continental option, and coffee as well, straight and black for Dean, a chai-esque latte for himself, and when he gets back, Dean’s still sleeping, laying on his stomach and drooling a little on the pillow. Sam snorts at the sight, takes a sip of his coffee and then sits on his bed, legs crossed, and closes his eyes. 

Sam’s breathing evens out as he goes about checking the barriers around his power. Missouri told him that it would eventually come naturally, without needing to think about it so closely, and Jeannie told him, all smiles and promises, that someday he won’t need to keep it so tight behind walls, that he’ll be able to let it go, but until then, that he needs to bind it to himself, to blood, breath, and bone. It’s easiest now to anchor this fire to his bones and leave it sit there, humming, almost easier and more familiar than it should be after less than a month of practice, but he won’t argue the good luck. Later, when he can do this without thinking about it, he’ll try the next step, either letting the fire flood through his blood or inhabit his breath, but every time he thinks about the former, he thinks of boiling to death, and every time he thinks about the latter, he wonders if maybe he’ll be like a dragon, one burp and he’s breathing fire. 

The walls around his power look good enough, tall and strong and thick, so Sam opens his eyes and sees Dean sitting up in the other bed, watching him with an expression Sam can’t decipher. “You good?” Dean asks, and Sam nods as he unfolds himself, knees popping. “Last night,” Dean says carefully, watching Sam the way one hunter might watch another they’ve never met before, “you moved the salt shaker.” Sam says, “I didn’t think you saw that,” an implicit admission, and Dean laughs and yawns as Sam reddens a bit because, yeah, he should’ve known Dean saw that, no matter how much attention his brother was paying Vicky. “It won’t happen again,” Sam says, and Dean does this half-assed, one-shoulder shrug and asks, “You want the shower first? You should’ve woken me up when you left; I would’ve gone with you.” Sam grins, shakes his head. “You’d only slow me down, shorty. Besides, it was worth it to see you drooling all over your pillow. Bagels and coffee on the table,” Sam says, then goes into the bathroom and takes a lukewarm shower. 

\--

They head out to Harlow Lake, pleased that they don’t see any other cars on the curvy road, and Dean nearly drives past the narrow lane that will take them to the lake. The long path is dirt, of course, and looks as if it was carved right out of the forest they’ve been in since the bridge; the road is big enough for the Impala and that’s it, trees and bushes and weeds beginning right at the edges of the dirt and canopying over them. “Good thing we don’t have allergies,” Dean mutters as he parks in a turn-off, and Sam grins as they get out and grab the EMF and two rock-salt-loaded shotguns. A short walk over a rickety bridge and they’re standing on large rocks overlooking the lake. It’s pretty and quiet, the water calm and placid, only the sound of a few late-season insects around them, and Sam looks down at the EMF Dean’s holding. “Nothing?” he asks, and Dean shakes his head, says, “Maybe she only comes out after lunch. You picking up anything?” Sam swallows, steps down to a lower rock and crouches at the edge, looking into the water. “Don’t fucking touch it,” Dean calls out, and so Sam doesn’t, remembering Lucas even though this looks shallow. 

Very carefully, Sam opens that part of his mind that can sense these things, sends out a web over the lake. It’s calm, like the water, but then he feels a sunburst of pain in one section and is already stumbling backwards and saying “Dean” before he can close off his mind. “I see her,” Dean says, voice tight, and Sam picks up his shotgun, looks out over the water, and laughs in disbelief, says, “Fuck.” There’s a woman _walking across the lake_ , like it’s solid, and even though Sam’s grown up hunting, there are some things he will _never_ get used to. He points the shotgun at her, sees Dean do the same, and has enough time to try and decide whether this woman looks more like Constance Welch or Sarah before she’s suddenly a hell of a lot closer. 

Dean fires an instant before Sam and the salt from Dean’s gun goes right through her and falls in the lake, making the water steam and bubble. Sam’s shot connects, though, and the woman looks at him and through real-life stop-motion photography or _whatever_ , she’s standing not ten feet in front of him, the ragged ends of her nightgown disappearing into the water. She’s making Sam’s teeth buzz, on edge, and he’s inwardly relieved when Dean scrambles down and stands next to him. “Why did yours work, and _fuck_ if she isn’t creeping me out,” Dean murmurs, and then freezes as the woman’s eyes slide, soft and easy, to focus on Dean. 

Sam’s feeling a steady pounding in his head and the EMF in Dean’s pocket is making noise, and he can _see_ an unwavering rise of power around the woman as the lake turns darker. “Shit,” he says, and shoots at the ghost again after muttering a quick and dirty blessing over the shotgun and rock-salt bullet. This one hits her as well, blows her head to smithereens, and she disappears. Dean turns to him, but Sam says, “She’s not gone, not for good,” and it’s not just the rhythm in his head telling him this; even if the EMF’s gone silent, the water keeps getting darker and darker. 

“Let’s go,” he says, sure that they don’t want to be here when the water actually turns black, and Dean looks as if he’s about to argue before he shrugs and says, “All right. You can do some research.” It’s not until they get back in the car and on the road that Sam asks, “What’re you gonna be doing?” and Dean flashes a grin, says, “Interviews. Now tell me why your salt worked and mine didn’t.” Sam frowns, asks if Dean’s gun and ammo were blessed, and of course they were. “Might be a side-effect of,” Sam says, finishing his sentence by gesturing at his head, and Dean looks as convinced as Sam feels by that argument. 

\--

Dean drops Sam and a backpack full of notebooks and the laptop off at the public library, one of the swankier ones he’s seen in a town this size, but it’s not like there’s another city twenty minutes away and there _are_ eight thousand undergrads here. He spends two hours with books and microfiche and comes up with nothing, so he asks the reference librarians and they tell him that the university’s library’s better suited to this sort of research, did he try that already, and what class is this all for? “Creative writing,” Sam says immediately, turning on his puppy-dog eyes, and then leaves, walking up Third Street towards campus. 

No one questions him as he walks in, heading unerringly for the old microfilm records—it’s almost funny, a country apart but all university libraries are really the same, even if this campus apparently only has one library, when Stanford has over fifteen. It takes him half an hour to find the old newspaper clippings, an anniversary article celebrating Marquette’s haunted history, and it makes Sam shake his head that anyone would be _proud_ of living somewhere haunted. He makes copies, takes notes, cross-checks the references in two books upstairs, and then goes outside and calls Dean. “Paydirt,” he says when Dean answers and Dean says, “Yeah, me too. You still at the library?” Sam grins, says, “A different one. I’m hungry.”

\--

“That’s one thing about Michigan,” Dean says when they get back to the motel. At Sam’s raised eyebrow, Dean pats his stomach and says, “Family restaurants,” as if that explains everything, and it almost does. “How many times did you and dad,” Sam trails off, and Dean lays on his bed, staring at the ceiling, as he answers, “Enough to know that the best and cheapest place to eat in any town is a family place, and they’re in _every_ town in this state. All a Michigan town needs is a bar, a church, and a family restaurant. Maybe a pharmacy,” Dean adds; “I can’t believe how many of those there are now.” Sam snorts, kicks off his shoes and sits at the table, pulling out the laptop, his notes, and the copies. “What’d you find out?” he asks, ready to see where Dean’s pieces fit with his, and Dean sits up, scoots back until he’s propped up against the wall, one wrist resting on a pulled-up knee. 

“It’s all like what Vicky said,” Dean says, meeting Sam’s gaze. “The five kids, they’re the ticket, I think. We find out why she went after them, we find the key.” Sam interjects here, says, “Etienne. The woman who died, her name was Etienne.” He leans forward, passes Dean the copy of the news article. Dean glances over it, and nods. “Yeah. Like I said, find out why she went all nutso after the kids, we’ll know why she’s back. Best I got on the other two’s just local gossip. One of the fishermen’s cheating on his wife and the two kids, the couple? Only dating for a few months, but she’s pregnant. Or was, anyway; she lost the kid when she went into shock.”

\--

They catch a few hours of sleep and then call Vicky when the news is ending and the late-night talk-shows are starting. Dean’s talking to her, Sam made his brother call, and all he’s said since the initial, “Tell me about the first group,” has been noncommittal, things like, “Yeah,” “Really?” and “Mm-hmm.” Sam’s curious to know what she’s telling Dean, but instead of just listening in without pretence, he’s trying to find some more information about Etienne on-line. There’s not much besides what they already know, and there’s not a thing on reverse women-in-white, so Sam’s pretty much decided that this is just a haunting, a ghost, maybe, if he stretches things, her spirit bonded to the lake, but nothing else. Still, if they’re going to stop her, it’d be nice to know how she chooses her victims and what her weaknesses are, because it’s not like they can dig her bones up. 

When Dean gets off of the phone, he has an odd look on his face, like he’s eaten something sour, and so Sam gets worried, asks what Vicky said. “The four kids, that went out there with pentagram-chick? They swing,” and Sam doesn’t get it right away. Dean rolls his eyes when Sam finally does, and Sam says, “So what connects them? What do they have in common?” and Dean looks at Sam as if he’s lost his mind. “Think about it, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam doesn’t bother correcting him, “swingers, adulterers, and fornicators.” Sam thinks, eventually hazards the guess, “Forbidden love? Since she couldn’t have her's, no one else can? That’s petty,” and then, “So Vicky’s friend, Etienne didn’t go after her because she’s not doing anything forbidden? But I thought the pentagram,” and then he stops, and looks at Dean _every_ thing clicking. 

“The pentagram had power because it wasn’t negated by something forbidden, like my rock-salt hit her because I’m not doing anything forbidden? Why didn’t yours work?” and then he raises an eyebrow, says, “When did you have time to,” and stops when Dean glares at him. Sam grins, then smirks, then laughs, and says, “No, really, _when_ , dude?” Dean’s glare gets worse and he finally snaps, “It isn’t funny, _Sam_. And for your information, I haven’t done anything. She must be able to pick up on thoughts or something,” and Sam doesn’t, can’t stop laughing, because Dean’s finally seeing the negative side of being such a ladies’ man. 

Sam stops laughing after a long while, and asks, “D’you want me to do this one myself?” and Dean shakes his head, picks up their dad’s journal from the night-table between the beds, thumbs to a page, and hands it to Sam. “A purification ritual,” Sam says, looking from the journal to Dean, who’s serious, and any smile Sam might’ve been feeling drops away. “Really?” Dean nods, shifts, says, “I don’t want you doing it by yourself. Something might go wrong, or your power might flip out, or something. We’ll do this tomorrow and then take a crack at Etienne.” Sam’s inclined to argue, because a purification ritual is too much trouble to go through just to banish a water-bound ghost, but Dean’s looking mulish and if Dean wants to do it, “Fine. Tomorrow, if we can get everything we need up here.”


	5. Depression

They drive along the lake, out of Marquette and towards the greenhouse in Harvey that Vicky goes to. The flowers are a bit thin, but the selection of herbs and seeds is top-notch, and they leave with everything the ritual requires. It’s a water ritual, the one in their dad’s journal, and Sam thinks it’s strangely appropriate, a cleansing baptism to purify Dean so he can banish a water-bound spirit, appropriate and ironic as hell. Dean guides the Impala to a little, out-of-the-way stretch of sand along the lake, a cove Vicky told them about when they called her that morning, and it’s quiet, save the sound of water and birds in the trees. Dean makes a circle out of cactus spines in the damp sand and strips from the waist up, shivering slightly in the cold air, while Sam fills three shallow terra-cotta bowls with lake water and places them inside of the still-open circle, along with the pouches of herbs and seeds they’d bought at Meister’s. With Dean looking on, Sam takes the one flower they bought, a white lily, and plucks the petals, scattering them over the surface of the water in the bowls. 

That done, he steps away from the circle and looks at Dean, standing across the outline of cactus spines, says, “You’re sure?” Dean nods, lets Sam see his cocky grin before it slides off, replaced by a solemn expression as Dean steps into the circle, facing the lake, and closes it behind him before dropping to his knees. Sam follows along in the journal as Dean blends herbs and seeds in the bowls of water, chanting a Latin prayer every time he pours and mixes and scoops. Dean doesn’t miss a beat, and Sam wonders if that’s due to practice, seeing their dad do the same ritual, or the discussion they’d had last night over every aspect of the ritual, what was intrinsic and what could be changed, the order of things, the Latinate declensions. 

After ten minutes of preparation, during which Sam’s left eyelid starts twitching because of the amount of power Dean’s calling up for this, Dean stops chanting and takes a deep breath before picking up the bowl on the left and scooping out damp clumps of bay leaves, thyme, and cloves. “ _Libera me, ab omnibus iniquitatis meis et universis malis,_ ” Dean says, then slathers the goop on his chest, and Sam steps back as his head starts to pound. Dean built the circle to contain the power, and if Sam’s only feeling a trickle of it now, he’s glad Dean’s the one inside, picking up the right-most bowl and painting his face with ferns and rosemary and sage. Sam sees Dean’s hand shake when he sets the bowl down, hears a slight breathlessness in his brother’s voice as Dean follows up his plea for deliverance with the prayers of confession and penitence, and then picks up the middle bowl, holding nothing but blessed and power-ridden lake water.

“ _Concede mihi, benignissime Iesu, gratiam tuam, ut mecum sit et mecum laboret mecumque in finem usque perseveret. In manus tua, Domine, commendo spiritum meum_ ,” Dean murmurs, almost too faint for Sam to hear over the staccato drumbeat in his ears, and then Dean lifts the bowl, holds it above him and pours the water over his head. Sam’s knees give out at the rush of power as the water falls, tracing out rivulets in the drying flora on his brother’s body, and when it’s gone, he has to remember how to breathe again. 

Dean kneels a minute longer, then turns to Sam and asks, “Did it work?” Sam blinks, trying to see beyond the protection of purification marking Dean, making Dean glow, using the fire in his bones to help clear his sight. When it works, Dean’s staring at him, worried, so Sam says, “Yeah, it worked.” The glow notwithstanding, the water Dean poured over himself cleared away the herb-and-seed paste in specific patterns and the remainder looks damp, looks like it should. Once it dries and cracks off, Dean won’t be covered by the ritual and Etienne might be able to come after him again, but it looks good now, looks like it’ll last long enough to get the job done, so Sam nods, says again, “Yeah, it looks good. How do you feel?” Dean gets this pouty look as he stands up and breaks the circle, picking up the bowls and heading for the Impala, and Sam laughs when he hears Dean mutter, “This shit _itches_.” 

They’re in the Impala, halfway to Harlow Lake, by the time Dean finally asks, “What happened to you back there?” and Sam looks out of the corner of his eyes to see Dean concentrating too intently on the road. He’s about to say that nothing happened, nothing was wrong, but Dean says, “And don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ I know you didn’t start out on your knees.” Sam sighs, reminds himself that Dean deserves honesty and truth and no half-lies and, really, this confession isn’t as bad as saying he’s hearing things, so. “I could sense the power,” he says, searching for words as the Impala slows, going around a bend, and doesn’t speed up again on the other side. “Almost as soon as you closed the circle,” he goes on, “and when you finished, it was like my head exploded and I couldn’t see anything.” 

Sam watches as Dean takes that in, and when Dean asks, “And now?” Sam rubs a temple absently. “If I don’t shield, you still glow. I’m guessing that the glow will dissipate as the spell does. And,” he says, steeling himself, “I can feel you, the spell on you. Faint, but I could find you if we got separated.” Dean doesn’t say anything, and they’re getting closer to the turn-off, because Sam recognises these hills, these half-circle turns and trees. “Dean,” he says, and Dean’s jaw clenches along with his hands on the steering wheel, and Sam doesn’t say anything more. 

“I don’t like it,” Dean eventually says, and Sam’s heart is breaking as Dean goes on, “I don’t like going after a ghost without knowing you can throw up a circle and an exorcism if you need to,” which sounds to Sam more like a logistical problem than an acceptance issue, so he waits, breath held. “Once we’re done,” Dean says, looking at Sam briefly, “we’ll have to figure out what your limits on shielding are and whether it’s just old-school Christian rituals or everything that fries your power,” and Sam wants to smile but he can’t, not now, so he nods and says, “Yeah, okay. But no way in hell am I smearing goop all over myself.” Dean laughs, raises an eyebrow, and stays quiet. 

\--

They’re lucky again, two days in a row, that no other car is parked by the lake, and Sam wonders if that’s really luck or the ghost’s design, if the only people drawn here are her potential victims. That might make sense, as Dean looks honest-to-fuck excited about this while Sam just feels sick to his stomach, foreboding completely unrelated to his power, which is thrumming from having Dean and Etienne both in near proximity. He thinks that, then looks up suddenly, so suddenly that Dean notices, asks, “What? What is it?” Sam shakes his head, fingers tightening around the cross he’s holding, and says, “She’s here. Not _here_ , but in the lake. She knows we’re here, and she’s waiting,” he adds, quietly, trying to get used to the sensation of her mind brushing against the limits of his power, and Dean closes the trunk, salt in one fist, shotgun held loosely in the other hand, nods. “Let’s not keep her waiting too long,” he says, and takes off for the rocks. 

Sam follows, still shaking his head every so often, hair flopping over his eyes, trying to shake off the sensation of eyes inside of his skull, and stops next to Dean. His brother’s on the rock, staring at the ghost and still, immobile. “Dean?” Sam whispers, but Dean doesn’t react, not for a long minute, and his voice is distant when he finally says, “Stick to the plan, Sammy.” Sam’s about to respond, ask if everything’s all right, but then Dean says, “Sam,” just like their dad, expecting obedience, so Sam goes down to the low rock and tosses a handful of salt and sage into the water. 

The ghost’s power flares and it hits Sam like a punch, hurts, and he’s kneeling on the rock and can see the water turning black. Sam looks up, out over the water, and he can see Etienne’s lips moving, but he can’t hear anything, so he looks at Dean, and feels despair. “Dean!” he yells, but Dean’s not listening or doesn’t hear, and Sam rocks back on his heels for a split-second before holding the crucifix over the water and beginning the prayer of blessing. He’s only a repetition in when there are feet in his vision, blue, thin ankles, the torn and frayed ends of a waterlogged nightgown dipping and dragging under the lake’s surface. He doesn’t look up, keeps praying, hurrying now, and then yells when he feels hands, tiny, bird-bone-brittle, curling in his hair and yanking his head up. He looks up, doesn’t really have a choice, and he watches her lips stop moving. 

Two things happen at once: Sam hears Dean swear and start clambering down to where he’s being held by the spirit, getting the shotgun ready as Sam lifts the crucifix and presses it hard against Etienne’s stomach. He holds it there, listens as it burns away the nightgown and sizzles and smokes against her skin, for as long as it takes her to release her hold on him and Dean to reach him. Dean’s not as loud an itch in the back of Sam’s mind, and when he looks, Sam sees that half of the purification rite has worn off. “I heard her sing,” Dean says, holding the gun steady, pointing it at the ghost, who’s backed away from the brothers. “She sang the purity off; I could feel it. Any of your legends say anything about her voice?” Sam shakes his head, readjusts his hold on the cross, says, “No, but if only her potential victims could hear it,” before trailing off and asking, “Did any of your interviews?” Dean says no and fires at the spirit, who’s begun walking back towards them, looking even more pissed off. Half of the rock-salt goes through her, but half doesn’t, and she opens her mouth to sing again just as Sam kneels and continues the cycle of prayers. 

He gets to the fifth repetition before Etienne is _right there_ , lifting the gun out of Dean’s entranced hands, running two fingers down the curve of Dean’s jaw. “Bitch,” Sam hisses, and stands up, brandishing the crucifix at her. She bares her teeth but backs far enough away and quick enough that Sam can reach into Dean’s pockets for an extra salt bullet, crumble it up, and lay a circle around his brother. He almost falls into the water when the circle goes up, skin buzzing at the sensation of power, but then Dean blinks and shakes himself awake, and says, “Holy _fuck_.” Sam’s angry now, angrier than he can remember being in a long time, maybe since Dr. Ellicott, and he’s boiling up, over, steaming just like the damn lake, so he says, “Should’ve fucking come by myself,” and ignores Dean’s, “PMS much?” 

Sam keeps muttering to himself as he takes the knife out of his jeans, tucked under his shirt and hoodie in the small of his back, curve of the blade echoing the curve of roads, shorelines, and the edges of this lake, keeps muttering as he holds the knife in one hand and the crucifix in another, and kneels for a third time on the edge of the rock. He starts the prayers again, not taking his eyes off of the cross, watching her reflection in his peripheral vision on the edge of the knife, and this time makes it through all seven repetitions. 

When he’s done, he slices his palm over with the knife, coats the crucifix in blood, and drops it in the lake with a murmured “ _In nomine, Iesu_.” The water around the cross immediately turns blue, clear and calm, and Sam can watch as the blessing takes back the lake from the curse. Within seconds, the only area of the lake that’s black is right where Etienne’s feet and nightgown meet the water, and Sam can feel pressure build up in his head and feet and sinuses, the triune power of the prayer, the cross, and the blood of a believer against Etienne, and Sam screams, spine bending, when it breaks. He has one moment of lucid thought, _This is going to hurt_ , before he loses consciousness, head banging against hard stone. 

\--

He’s not out for long, he knows that in the instant after he wakes up, gasping, because Dean is only just now kicking away at the salt circle and the pain in Sam’s head hasn’t settled in yet. He reaches up, touches the back of his head and feels a thick, sticky patch of blood still rising to the surface, feels blood oozing out of his palm. “That’ll do,” he says, and now Dean’s kneeling next to him and hears that, says, “What’ll do for what?” Sam’s eyes are burning, he’s not sure whether from the pain or the fire, and he looks at Dean, savage smile playing about his lips. “I have to make sure she’s gone,” he says, in a tone that says Dean should have known that, but, instead, Dean looks worried, so Sam adds, “It won’t take long, and then I’ll be back.” Sam brings the fingers with the blood from his head-wound up to his face and smears a line down the centre of his forehead before licking the remainder off of his palm. His eyes go wide as Dean leans forward and says, hands tracking over Sam’s face, hair, head, “Sammy? What’d you do? Sammy!” and then his eyes close and his mind is transported away by burning wings of flame.


	6. Acceptance

He opens his eyes and feels the fire curling around his feet and ankles, halfway up his legs. It’s purring and rubbing against his skin, cat-like, as tiny offshoots writhe upwards, sparking in the abyss. He smiles down at the fire, then looks up and around where he’s standing, a flicker of light in a black, empty plane. He’s at once relieved and scared, proud of himself for making it to the astral plane and scared he won’t be able to find his way back, but then he remembers why he’s there and the fire around his feet dances upwards with his rising anger. Only the stronger dead are in this level of the plane, only those strong enough and powerful enough, and that should scare him when he sees orbs heading formlessly in his direction, but Missouri taught him and Jeannie trained him and that _bitch_ wanted his _brother_. 

As the dead approach, Sam calls fire and it floods upwards and outwards, settling on his skin and making him glow, keeping him warm. It soothes the humming in his bones, like ice put on a bruise, and so by the time a few of the dead are near him, his anger’s cooled a little, been burnt to ashes and vengeance in the middle of his fire and the plane. “Why are you here?” one of the dead asks, and Sam tells them about Etienne, asks if she’s hiding here. “She is one of us,” the dead say, collectively, their words echoing off of the black expanse of space around them, around Sam, and he replies, trusting the feel of the words even if he doesn’t know where they come from, “I have to cleanse her here, like I did there.” The dead orb around him, shifting sinuously in and out of one another, spinning around him, faster and faster until they stop and leave a space open for him to walk through. He sees her and moves. 

Etienne is one of the stronger dead now, no longer a spirit trapped on earth but a soul trapped in the astral, wandering without a body. The torn edges of her nightgown flutter in an invisible breeze and the water dropping off of her hair falls and never hits ground. “He killed me,” she says, and Sam feels pity now, sympathy, studying the cross-shaped hole in her nightgown, the frail bones of her wrists. “I died because I loved something I couldn’t have, and I couldn’t take it anymore when the others…They flaunted it and I loved him and I just _couldn’t stand it_ ,” she says, and starts to cry. Sam feels sorrow pluck at his heart and pulls her close, holds her in a hug, and she sobs for all that she lost as the fire dries her out and then burns her. He holds his arms across his chest, as if she is still between them, for hours after nothing of her is left. 

When he finally looks up, he closes his eyes on the dark, barren landscape of the deeper astral plane and opens them closer to his body but not yet back within it. He thinks for a moment, trying to recall his lessons, and fire claws up his back as he realises that this is the psychic plane. Here, he has a body and not just the idea of one, a body that registers pain when he’s smacked on the head. Sam turns, fire flaring like a cobra’s hood around his head and then drops, sheepish, when he sees Missouri. _You didn’t even call up a circle, Sam Winchester!_ she chides, and Sam replies, like a five-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie-jar, _Dean’s there_. Missouri sighs, tells him, _Sam, it don’t matter if your brother’s there or not; he wouldn’t know a formless spirit ‘til it possessed you, and maybe not even then._

Sam doesn’t like it when other people lecture him, especially doesn’t like it when they insult Dean even obliquely, and Missouri’s a psychic, she picks up on this and says, weary, _Why are you here?_ like he’s shown up on her doorstep at two in the morning. Sam says _I’m coming down from the astral_ like it happens everyday, but Missouri gives him a sharp-eyed look and says, _I don’t want to know, do I,_ and it’s not a question so Sam doesn’t answer. _How’d you do it?_ she asks, and Sam’s grin lights up the plane, sends his fire leaping above his head, echoing his answer. _We blessed the water and let the connection between her and the lake banish her. My idea_ , he adds quickly, and Missouri laughs, a full belly-laugh like he’s never heard from her before. _Can you find your way back?_ she asks and Sam sinks into himself, feels a patch of dry, peeling blood on his forehead, feels the dull throbbing of a slice in his palm, feels the ache of falling to his knees on the rocks one too many times. _Yeah,_ he says, and leans down to kiss her cheek. _Thanks, Missouri_ , he says, and she smiles and replies, _Next time you’re in Kansas, stop by and see me._ Sam agrees, closes his eyes, and _breathes_. 

\--

He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know he’s back in his body; his head is throbbing and the sun’s shining right through his eyelids. The ground under him is hard and his hand’s been wrapped, so he doesn’t think Dean moved him, just laid him out like a burnt offering which, considering the fire tickling the marrow of his bones, might not be that far off. “She’s gone,” he says, jumping a little at the rasp, and he coughs to clear his throat. “Need to puke?” he hears, Dean’s smug voice, but there’s worry and concern under the attitude, so Sam says, “No, I’m fine. Just stiff. Dunno, though—maybe I would if I’d woken up in the car.” He feels, rather than sees, Dean’s glare, and sits up, the change in altitude making his head spin. 

Sam cracks his eyelids and it takes a moment for his pupils to shrink enough to see anything more than _bright_ , but then he’s looking out over the lake, watching sunlight dance upon the waves, thinking of Jess sitting next to him, cradled under his arm and pressed against him, watching the sun rise over the Bay. His soul aches at the loss and he blinks, chasing away San Francisco and Jess, and in the next moment he feels delicate, hollow fingers resting on his shoulder, feels _I loved him,_ feels heart-wrenching sorrow that drives beyond mind and soul, attaching itself to the sun and the trees and the laughing water, and then Dean is there, sitting next to him and whole, and everything wrong in the world is gone, banished like Etienne’s spirit, in the face of everything that is right. 

“She’s gone?” Dean asks, and Sam wonders if Etienne truly is, Etienne and Jess both, or if he’ll always carry a part of them in himself, the part that has loved and lost, whether by the hands of an enraged madman or the cunning of a demon. He says, “Yeah,” the word like a sacrifice to the blessed water, and stands up. “She won’t be haunting anyone or anything again,” and Dean looks up at him, stands, and helps Sam to the car. “I’m craving M&M’s,” is what Dean says as they’re pulling on to the road. “Since you finished off my last ones, you can buy me more. We’ll stop at that party store up the road.” Sam laughs, leans his head back carefully, and texts Vicky.

\--

They meet her that night at Vango’s, a local pizza place and bar or another family restaurant, Sam’s not sure which, after they’ve cleaned up, bandaged Sam’s knees, palm, and head, and changed into clothes that don’t smell so much of blood and herbs and salt and lake-water. This time, they don’t need to wait for her to guide them; they see her as soon as they walk in the door, sitting in a booth over by the bar. Sam slides into the booth across from Vicky, not meeting her eyes, and Dean sits next to him, knees bumping as they find the right distance. He sees Vicky shift slightly once he and Dean have settled, watches as she moves over so that she’s facing Dean more than Sam, and he knows that Dean sees it as he feels his brother tense. Sam prays to every deity he knows of, then to the Roman’s Unknown God, that Dean won’t say anything about it, and the waitress, a co-ed that vaguely reminds him of Becky, comes over so Sam thinks that maybe his prayer’s been answered, until he sees that Dean’s not flirting, just asks for a beer for both of them. 

The waitress pouts as she leaves and either Vicky’s oblivious to how angry Dean is right now or she’s trying to distract him because she says, “So, Sam said you’d gotten rid of the ghost?” and now Sam’s a little upset too, because what they did to Etienne, what _he_ did, wasn’t so much ‘getting rid of’ as ‘completely obliterating from every plane of existence.’ The only problem with this is that Dean’s anger just makes Dean sit up straighter and start reaching for a gun, foot tapping on the floor, eyes languid and lazy, predator waiting to pounce, but Sam’s anger tinges Sam’s vision red and makes Vicky’s glass of water start to bubble. 

Her eyes flick to the glass, then Dean, and she licks her lips and looks away, murmurs something under her breath. Dean leans forward, says, “Care to repeat that?” all low and demanding, and Sam shakes his head and consciously stamps down on his power. “Yes, we banished her,” he says, smooth emphasis on the verb, and Dean glances at him, snorts, and looks over Vicky’s shoulder as their waitress brings the beer. “Pizzas’ll be up in a minute,” she says, and leaves with a smile when Dean says, “Hey, thanks, darlin’.” 

“Did you get everything you needed at Meister’s?” Vicky asks, then, curious, “Just what were you doing with all that, anyway?” and Sam thinks that something is going on here, because Vicky should know. He looks at Dean, who’s drinking his beer, fingers gliding over slick-cold condensation and leaving Sam to answer the question, and this is one of those moments when Sam wishes he could speak mind-to-mind because there are a billion things he wants to say to Dean right now. “We did,” Sam eventually says after a swallow of his beer and power. “And we used everything in a ritual of protection before we went to the lake.” He’s stretching the truth, but not outright lying, and he thinks he sees something in Vicky’s eyes before her whole face lights up and her eyes flick from her glass to a space near Sam’s shoulder. “You’ve never participated in a ritual before,” he guesses and she laughs, says, “Is it that obvious?” Dean’s still not talking, to either of them, and Sam asks, brow furrowing because he’s honestly curious, “Why not?” 

Vicky shrugs, says something about being as good as a mundane in any sort of organised ritual, goes on and on about how awful that makes her feel, how useless and pointless her gift is, until even he’s ready to throttle her, so it doesn’t surprise him when Dean slams his beer back, then the bottle down, and walks out of the restaurant without looking at anyone or anything. She looks startled for a moment, but as soon as Dean walks out of the door, her features shift and he’s reading calm victory in her expression and asks, “Why’d you chase my brother out?” 

She laughs and shakes her head, and the waitress comes back with three pizza boxes, leaves them on the table and winks at Sam as she sashays away. “I wanted to tell you, lanmò-mennen,” she begins, serious and sombre and still not looking at him and the use of that Creole phrase makes him sit up straighter, narrow his eyes, “that you just can’t go traipsing about the astral every time you hunt. That, and there’s construction in Toledo. Now go and find your brother,” she says, pushing two of the boxes at Sam, “and thank you.” 

\--

Sam walks outside and almost trips over Dean, who’s leaning against the railing, obviously waiting. “What’s that?” Dean asks, when Sam stands next to him, balancing the boxes on hands that feel like trembling but haven’t gotten there yet. “Dinner. Pizza, I think. Dean,” he says, but Dean shakes his head, pushes away from the railing, hands curled into loose fists, and says, “Don’t, Sam.” Sam shuts his mouth, follows Dean to the Impala and stays in the car while his brother goes into a party store and comes out with two six-packs, stays still while Dean guns the car up the road and follows the sweep of the lake like a prowling tiger. They stop and park somewhere inconspicuous, walk right to the line dividing dry sand from wet, and sit, eat, get drunk in dark silence, water lapping at their toes. 

“I loved him,” Sam says, once he’s eaten and studied the silence for hours, stars that might be spirits glowing high above them. Dean looks over, says, “What?” and Sam says, “What Etienne said when I found her. I loved him. She said,” and Dean cuts in, says, “You don’t have to do this, Sammy.” Sam looks out over the water, cold and black and giggling, thinks of ghosts, Etienne and Jess, says, “Yeah, I do.” He waits for the words to come and doesn’t stop them when they bubble out of his throat, gives them voice and substance. “She just wanted to be happy. Y’know?” and it’s a long time in the quiet before Dean says, “Yeah. I do.”

\--

They leave Marquette the next morning and don’t look back, bound for Cincinnati. Sam says, “There’s construction on 75 in Toledo,” and Dean rolls his eyes, but when they approach the Ohio border, Dean turns off and finds state highways the rest of the way, Zeppelin loud in a comfortable silence.


End file.
